


Fly, With Weightless Souls

by havisham



Category: Montmaray Journals - Michelle Cooper
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Careless and young, free as the birds that fly, with weightless souls</i>. </p><p>Toby was very flighty, but Simon didn't mind. (Much.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly, With Weightless Souls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pressdbtwnpages](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressdbtwnpages/gifts).



**_Montmaray, once upon a time._ **

It was a sunny day on Montmaray, when Toby asked Simon to go for a swim. He had asked when they were quite alone, or else Henry would have heard and insisted on coming along. Toby indulged Henry — everyone did, it was hard not to — but for this, he had wanted Simon, and Simon only. 

They walked down to the pool together, making loud and careless talk of this or that. Simon was to go up to London soon, to take his job as a clerk for Mr. Grenville, and _that_ was all right.

Toby, in what he hoped was a carelessly cosmopolitan way, said, “You’ll like London, there’s loads more to do there than to empty lobster pots.” Then he paused and considered. “Or chamber pots.” He kicked a pebble down the sheer stone steps and watched it clatter downward and disappear. 

The sun was fierce today, the August heat almost unbearable even this close to the water. Simon didn’t answer him, but he had slowed his pace, and looked around, as if realizing for the first time that he was to leave Montmaray. To return again, for visits, wouldn’t be the same. 

Fiercely cheerful, Toby clapped Simon on the shoulder (it wasn’t an easy feat, Simon was so much taller than he was) and said, “And I can leave that beastly school of mine sometimes and visit you!” 

Simon gave him a swift, unreadable glance before bowing low, an elaborate and practised gesture. His voice was mocking as he said, “Your highness, if you should ever deign to visit me, your humble subject, I would be honored.” 

Toby stamped his feet, his sandals making a sharp slap against the rocky steps. “Don’t be so stuffy! Anyway, you’re not my subject, you’re Uncle John’s.” 

Simon smirked at him before turning away.

They had come to the tidal pool by this time, at the bottom of the winding steps from the castle. The black rocks ringed in the pool, and in high tide, the whole place was submerged. But it was low tide now, leaving behind a pool of seawater, big enough to swim in, with the sea murmuring its secrets below. 

They undressed swiftly, Toby stole some furtive glances at Simon’s backside, and drew some unhappy comparisons to himself. It wasn’t fair to compare himself to Simon, Toby reminded himself for the hundredth, for the thousandth time. Simon was a full five years older than him and quite grown up. 

Toby was stuck, currently, in an awkward stage, where his limbs shot out overnight, but nothing else seemed to follow, and his voice cracked at altogether terrible times, like when he was shouting or singing, or merely asking Veronica to pass the salt. 

Toby could not recall Simon ever having such trouble. He had slid from boyhood to adolescence, and then to manhood smoothly, hitting no snags along the way. He had made it look easy. 

A cold splash of water hit his face, and Toby sputtered in shock. Simon was already in the pool, the water turned his dark hair black. He smiled, truly joyous for the first time today, and said, “Are you coming in or are you just going to stare at me?” 

Toby patted at the breast pocket of his shirt. “If you’ve gotten this wet...!” But no, the packet of cigarettes, _English_ cigarettes, and matches he had bartered from the Basque captain were still quite dry. He showed Simon his prize with not a little pride, and offered him one. 

Simon raised an eyebrow (a trick Toby still hadn’t quite mastered) and said, “Your aunt allows you to smoke?” 

“Certainly not, she’d say that it’ll stunt my growth.” Toby lit a cigarette and then went back into the water, the chill of the water making his teeth rattle. He clutched at the cigarette packet, and concentrated. He didn’t quite know how he was supposed to smoke it, so he let it burn down almost to a stub and took a few cautious puffs on it, sucking in the smoke, hollowing his cheeks as he did so. He was doing splendidly, even if he did say so himself when he began to cough, taking into his lungs both air and smoke and water.

The cigarette pack fell into the water with little splash. 

Simon came and began to thump Toby on his back, his hands tight around Toby’s forearm. Even after he had quite recovered, thank you, Simon didn’t let go, and Toby, well, Toby didn’t move away. 

They had drifted from the edge of the pool, where their feet could touch the bottom, to the middle, where they floated, still touching. Toby’s prized cigarettes bobbed around in the water, sodden white sticks straying from the water-logged pack. All useless now. 

Toby himself cut through the water, face-first, stretching out until he felt himself expand, until he felt as big as Montmaray, as big as the sky. High above him, a little airplane made a thin line across the horizon, heading towards the continent, to lands beyond. 

Simon swam next to him, and spoke to him, urgently. “Toby, Toby, are you all right?”

Toby turned to him, and “Yes, of course I am.” 

Toby slid towards Simon, their slippery wet skin prickling into gooseflesh, until he was face to face with Simon, who looked worried, still. Then, Toby kissed him. It was different than kissing Julia, or the other debutantes. No soft, powdered skin, or perfume lingering on his fingertips. He had kissed other boys before (not Rupert, but others), but it was different than them too.

It was Simon, and Simon, Toby already knew, would always be different. 

Simon looked — not surprised, or angry — but merely — “Oh, _Toby_ ,” he said, his voice cracking like Toby’s did, often enough. Emotions flitted across his face, both happiness and sadness, but more importantly, he kissed him _back_ . 

Toby wasn’t at all conflicted, not about this anyway. He felt wholly ecstatic. He ducked out of Simon’s grasp and then surfaced nearby and splashed water on his face. 

They chased each other for a while, and at one point, Simon rose out of the water, seaweed tangling in his hair, making a good impression of a sea-monster. Toby giggled about it, when he looked up and saw a flash of familiar blue among the rocks.

It was Sophie-blue, the same color of Sophie’s work-dress. And there was Sophie, now a small spot of blue and white, and the light brown of her hair. She disappeared as quickly as she had come, her steps flying. 

Toby swallowed hard and sank deeply into the pool, until only his head was above the water. The sun dazzled his eyes and he squinted at Simon, who was still shaking off the last of the seaweed from his hair. He had seen nothing. 

Sophie, Toby decided, could keep a secret. For now, anyway. 

Also for now, there was Simon, who came to him, intent, his hands slipping between Toby’s thighs. Toby gave a little ragged gasp. Only the seagulls (and Simon) heard. 

**_London, some time ago._ **

It wasn’t as if he had spent the whole night glaring at Simon and the blonde woman he was dancing with. No, Toby had kept busy, he had danced with Veronica (who trod on his toes and glared when he started to complain) and then with Lady Bosworth’s horse-faced daughter, Helena. She looked at him quite soppily, as if she intended to hang on to him the whole night (his whole life, rather) — if she could. 

Toby was getting desperate. 

A white-jacketed waiter came by with a silver plate of canapės, and there was a small pause, a tiny scuffle, and Toby was able to make his escape. He had intended to hunt down Sophie and have a good long gossip, but then Simon’s blonde drifted past him in a cloud of white chiffon, arm-in-arm with another man, who, though quite tall, dark, and handsome, was _not_ Simon. 

In fact, Simon was not in the ballroom at all. 

Toby wandered through the crowds of people, stopping here and there to talk to someone, pressing the flesh, as it were. Aunt Charlotte would be pleased; he had not only danced with Helena, but had made more than one debutante’s heart flutter. 

But Toby never did more than that, he couldn’t, and — _yes_ , he resented that Simon could. That Simon did. 

A little voice in the back of his mind wondered, am I not enough? Shouldn’t I be? If Simon had been there, he would have laughed, a far harsher sound than it had been in Montmaray, and said, some discretion wouldn’t go awry. That Toby should never give someone a club to cudgel him with. 

Toby, Simon would insist, had never learned to be careful. _To care._ About what other people _thought._

Toby snagged another flute of champagne from a passing waiter — he recognized the man who had helped him escape from Helena’s clutches earlier. And so he toasted him, with a smile, which was returned. He watched the waiter for a while, and thought what he’d look without the white jacket, without the heavy pomade that flattened his black hair. 

“And that’s how I find you, hiding behind a pillar with your tongue hanging out?” 

Well, he had wanted to find Simon, hadn’t he? And now there he was, handsome and smug, a trace of red lipstick on his cheek. Toby reached for him and rubbed it out. Placidly, he said, “Missed a spot.” 

Simon flushed, so his cheeks matched the stain, and Toby grinned, satisfied. 

 

**_Geneva, a two days ago._ **

The Colonel was never wrong; there was sure to be a war. 

With that certainty filed away — not at the back of Toby’s mind, but not quite in the front — there was so much to do. He had gotten out of jail (a sad looking place, the only place in the whole of Switzerland that did not seem scrupulously clean), bailed out by Colonel Stanley-Ross (appearing like a greying genie) and Simon, who looked sour and disappointed. He had been driven to the League of Nations headquarters by the Colonel himself. 

Veronica was radiant, after her speech, a queen in all the ways that mattered, and Toby swallowed the temptation to say -- you were born for this. (Not me.) You should be doing this. (Not me.)

After the war, he thought, he’d tell her. This was the first time, he realized, that he thought of the war, and saw himself on the other end of it.

Sophie looked like she had not slept in days (none of them had) but she looked especially fragile. She closed her eyes when he hugged her, his little sister who wasn’t very little at all anymore. She gave a little choked off laugh and said, “I thought they’d gotten you.” She pulled away, her eyes seeking Simon’s. They exchanged a private glance, which Toby caught, and stored away, for future reference. 

She turned back to him and said furiously,“My heart nearly _stopped_ when Simon said you were in jail. Toby, _never do anything like that again._ ” 

“I won’t, Soph. I promise.” And she nodded distractedly, too tired to argue with his lies. 

 

**_An airplane from Geneva to London, twelve hours ago._ **

Toby fell asleep on the plane ride from Geneva, with his head resting on Simon’s shoulders. He woke up once, and asked the steward for a drink of water, and saw Sophie and the Colonel with their heads tilted down, buried in deep conversation. 

_I wonder if she’s in love with him._ Toby yawned. _Aunt Charlotte would be furious._

Simon stirred next to him, frowning in his sleep. 

 

 ** _London, tonight._**

They agreed that it would not do to aggrieve Aunt Charlotte further by arriving on her doorstep looking like fugitives. They decided that it would better to regroup and approach her tomorrow, carefully. 

The Colonel was then called away by some distant emergency. “Goodbye, children,” he said, with a quick smile on his weary face. “I won’t tell you to behave, I don’t think you’d listen.” And then he was gone, like a puff of smoke. 

Toby turned to Veronica and said, “How does he _do_ that?” 

Veronica shrugged, and turned her mind to more important matters. She and Sophie crowded into a phone booth and called Julia, and an half-hour later, Rupert arrived to bring them around. Simon had his own place in the city, the address of which Toby always forgot, and when they had seen the girls off, he turned and began to walk briskly down the steps, to the busy street below. Toby followed behind, and they did not speak. They waited for the bus, and when it came for Toby to pay his fare, he could find nothing in his pocket but a wrinkled five franc note. 

He let a group of girls go in front of him, giggling and turning their heads to stare at him. Gloomily, Toby wondered he had enough to call Rupert again, when he heard Simon shout for his attention. Simon paid for his ticket, and they stood, crowded in tight, as the bus rumbled down the road.

 

 **~**

 

Simon’s flat was extremely small and poky. And dark. Aunt Charlotte clearly did not pay him enough. Then, Simon turned on the lights. It was still very small and poky, just a room, furnished with a narrow bed, and books lining the edges of the desk and bedside table. Everything was in disarray, with shirts and shoes on the floor and papers on the bed. The mess, no doubt, was due to their hasty departure from London. Probably. Toby nudged away a cream-colored sock with toe of his shoe, and pushed his hands into his pocket. 

Simon hovered behind him, stubbornly silent. 

Toby asked, “Do you love Sophie?” The question was out before he could stop to wonder if he truly wanted to know. Simon took a few steps forward.

His voice was quiet, and uncharacteristically uncertain. “No. I don’t know. Maybe.” 

Toby wet his lips and asked the inevitable question. “Do you love me?” 

“Yes.” Simon stepped behind him, and kissed the back of his neck. His words dug into Toby’s skin, each one a painful drag. _Yes, yes, yes._

 

**_Simon’s bed, now._ **

Simon slept curled up on his side, his dark hair spilling across his face. Toby pushed it aside, and Simon stirred awake, and looked up at him. They had so much to talk about, so many things to make clear that Toby found himself struck dumb. The room was quiet, except for the distant roar of traffic and the slow ticking of a clock, the sound of their breathing. 

After a while, Toby spoke. “You don’t have do this, you know. Join up with me,” He gently flicked one last curl away from Simon’s forehead. 

“And have you fly off on your own?” Simon pushed aside the bedsheets and sat up. There was a crease in between his brows that never fully went away, though Toby tried to smooth it out, with a sweep of his thumb. Simon ducked his caress and scowled. His voice was muffled when he said, “Don’t.” 

“At least, now, you must admit — it’s the one thing I’m better at than you,” Toby said, with a smile. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Simon said seriously. 

“Idiot! Of course it does,” said Toby, and kissed him. 

 

It was like taking off, once again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Ben Howard's "Old Pine." 
> 
> Thank you, Elleth, for the last-minute beta job. ♥


End file.
